I was unaware that middle school meant homework assignments for the parents too, but Ms. Bice said "In order to get a good picture of the students I am teaching this year [pretty sure there should be a comma there, but Ms. Bice didn't add one] I am asking each parent or guardian to write a short essay (1000 words or less) on their child.

So I did.  And I thought I'd share it with you, dear Reader, because I liked how it turned out.

Patrick "Patch" Derks

He’s a good looking kid, you notice immediately as he walks in.  Light brown (or is it dark blonde?) hair close cropped on his head like his dad’s.  Depending on his mood that morning, there might be some product in it, to spike it up in a faux-hawk, or even a touch of red coloring across where his bangs would be, if his hair was long enough for bangs.  Which it isn’t.  His glasses are constantly lower than they ought to be and if his eyes didn’t smile so brightly, they might be hidden by his frames.  His smiles are wonders, because they engage his whole face, and make him look as though he is about to burst into laughter.  Which he probably is.

You might think he’s older than he is, because he’s tall for his age, and has a presence about him.  A confidence.  If the room was new, or the people unfamiliar, there might have been a moment of hesitation, of uncertainty, but you probably missed it, because it was only momentary.  Now he is ready to begin and begin well.

You might think he is older than he is, because he is a conversationalist.  He can ask about you, and tell you about himself.  He hasn’t just talked with kids growing up, he’s talked with adults and isn’t intimidated by them.  He knows he has interesting things to say, and he’s interested in what you might tell him.  He’ll share with you his love of soccer (Manchester United in particular, and though Wayne Rooney is his first love, the quiet constancy of Robin Van Persie, the Dutchman, has won his heart away from the mercurial and sometimes brooding Merseysider).  He loves to play too, and he’ll explain to you, though you might not understand, the joy of the full volley or the bicycle kick that he tried in practice.  Or his love of video games, especially the open world builders, like Minecraft with its obsidian block and invisible stones, and Disney Infinity which he is still learning.  Or his fascination with cooking shows, especially Good Eats because it’s about science too.

You might think he’s older than he is, because he’s more empathetic than many adults will ever learn to be.  He’ll stop and help up a child or ask an adult how they are doing and care about the response.  He’s unfailingly polite as well, with the possible exception of toward his parents, and is likely to give you a hug as well as a kind “good-bye” on the way out the door.

You might think he’s older than he is, but he really is eleven.  And he’s pretty good at being an eleven year old boy.  He’s kind of disorganized, and his backpack will become the same rat’s nest that every other eleven year old boy’s becomes by the middle of the first six weeks, no matter their intentions to start middle school new and differently with a new organizational ethic. 

He’s eleven and he might burst into song, or tell a joke to distract the class.  He might be giggling with the kid next to him about something funny that’s occurred to him about the Jamestown settlers, or trapezoids, or square roots.  He’s eleven and he’s forgotten his books and his assignments and his lunch.  He bought cool new body wash this year that smells good, but you sometimes still have to convince him to take a shower.  He reads, but you might never see him do it.  “I finished the Hunger Games,” he’ll say despite the fact you never saw it in his hands.  “Oh, yeah? Tell me about it,” you might challenge.  But you’d lose.  He’ll not only tell you the entire plot and most of the characters, but also be able to explain how the book differs from the movie, and in the case of Hugo, how much better the book was.

He’s still just eleven and his confidence is hard won.  His parents separated when he was only two and a half and while he doesn’t remember too much about it, staying in a cold overseas country with his dad and then leaving his dad behind for three months meant figuring things out pretty quick.  His weeks are for his mom and his weekends for his dad and the hours in transition belong to I-95.  Life has changed some over the last few years.  He was a pillar of strength while his dad was assigned to the US Embassy in Baghdad and adjusted to his dad’s new apartment in Alexandria (further away than the old apartment in Fredericksburg) without missing a beat.  His mom moved too last year and he was lucky to be able to finish out his school year at Mechanicsville Elementary, where he had begun in kindergarten all those years ago.

But this is middle school.  A new house, a new step dad (same old dad, though), a new neighborhood, and a new school.  Enough to shake the confidence of most kids and maybe even this one.  But he’s willing to talk it out and knows enough about the people in his life to be certain that they have his back. His mom, his dad, his stepdad and stepsister, his grandmothers and grandfather, his aunt and uncles, his cousins too.  They all have his back.  So even if he doesn’t know any of the people in front of him, he’s going to go out there and see who is interesting to know.  He seems older like that.

New Pop

YDS has been thinking alot lately, but not writing much.  In the hopes that some writing, any writing, will get me motivated again, YDS has a new pop song for you.  There doesn't seem to be a video-hard as that is to imagine-but here is the music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-20inKxm08w&feature=related

To be honest, I don't find this an amazing song lyrically, except for the chorus.  I mean, the story of the innocence lost of a rapper and his worry of when the ride will come to an end is not exactly one of universal appeal.  What draws me in is Hayley Williams amazing emo-pop voice and the longing expressed in pretending that something ordinary is something extra ordinary.  Who doesn't need a wish right now?

I'm also thrilled about cross over efforts with hip hop and alternative.  The juxtaposition of the melodic chorus against the rapping verse keeps me listening to the song over and over again.

Anyway, as I said, the chorus is really the reason the lyrics are note worthy, but here they are for what they are worth.

Can we pretend that airplanes
In the night sky
Are like shooting stars
I could really use a wish right now (wish right now, wish right now)
Can we pretend that airplanes
In the night sky
Are like shooting stars
I could really use a wish right now (wish right now, wish right now)

Yeah
I could use a dream or a genie or a wish
To go back to a place much simpler than this
Cause after all the partyin' and smashin' and crashin'
And all the glitz and the glam and the fashion
And all the pandemonium and all the madness
There comes a time where you fade to the blackness
And when you're staring at that phone in your lap
And you hoping but them people never call you back
But that's just how the story unfolds
You get another hand soon after you fold
And when your plans unravel
And they sayin' what would you wish for
If you had one chance
So airplane airplane sorry I'm late
I'm on my way so don't close that gate
If I don't make that then I'll switch my flight
And I'll be right back at it by the end of the night

Can we pretend that airplanes
In the night sky
Are like shooting stars
I could really use a wish right now (wish right now, wish right now)
Can we pretend that airplanes
In the night sky
Are like shooting stars
I could really use a wish right now (wish right now, wish right now)

Somebody take me back to the days
Before this was a job, before I got paid
Before it ever mattered what I had in my bank
Yeah back when I was tryin' to get into the subway
And back when I was rappin' for the hell of it
But now a days we rappin' to stay relevant
I'm guessin that if we can make some wishes outta airplanes
Then maybe yo maybe I'll go back to the days
Before the politics that we call the rap game
And back when ain't nobody listened to my mix tape
And back before I tried to cover up my slang
But this is for the Cada, what's up Bobby Ray
So can I get a wish to end the politics
And get back to the music that started this sh-t
So here I stand and then again I say
I'm hopin' we can make some wishes outta airplanes


Can we pretend that airplanes
In the night sky
Are like shooting stars
I could really use a wish right now (wish right now, wish right now)
Can we pretend that airplanes
In the night sky
Are like shooting stars

A Blogging Tradition since 2007

YDS just noticed that he missed his two year blogging anniversary back in November.

That could well be because I don't really have any remarkable insights on the blog over the last year.  I'm proud of my four part piece on the trip to Baghdad (posted here, here, here, and here) and the companion piece, where I explained why I volunteered to serve here.

You would have thought, and YDS would have agreed with you, that living on a sealed compound like the US Embassy in Baghdad would have led to more writing, not less.  Instead, my post total from 2009 was almost exactly the same as that of 2008.  I think FaceBook has served to take the place of the short posts about goofy stuff and the links that I want to share about ridiculous news.  So perhaps, while the quality has stayed about the same, the quality may have improved.

More concerning to YDS than the fact that I have not written more here, is the fact that I have not written more on the two full length plays that I am working on.  I'm not sure why that is.  It may well be because there are only 24 hours in a day and many of them are consumed by working and working out.  YDS set as a priority for this yet losing weight and getting in shape.  I've been successful, but it takes significant time and discipline that has not left me with a great deal in the tank to turn to more creative pursuits.

Anyway, YDS has two followers now and is proud of the fact.  Thank you Dear Followers, and thank you Dear Reader.  As I said on my first anniversary, I write this for me, but YDS is happy to have you along for the ride.

... and stops my mind from wandering where it will go.

In a job like YDS's sometimes you hear the same information from the same people more than once.  Heck, sometimes you hear it like a hundred thousand times.  The message is the same.  The audience is the only thing that changes, and YDS finds himself in that same audience too many times.

That repetition, in a positive vein, can fix the "hole[s] where the rain gets in," and allow for some very productive mind wandering.  Especially for someone who is homesick, and hungry.  When that hungry and homesick person takes notes on the wanderings of his mind (as YDS did yesterday), it can be sort of interesting and so I thought I would share those wanderings (and my annotations to those wanderings) with you, Dear Reader.  The following is what appeared in my notepad after the session.  To wit:

cheese and beer ...
perhaps a crusty bread

chicken wings and a wheat beer

a vodka plate and Russky Platinum
at kipoklu nams or the Russian Restaurant

Bischoff's fish and chips and a well-poured Guiness
with lots of vinegar

Fried oysters with slightly underdone steak fries and tooth-cracking cold Budweiser

Masitas de peurco with fried plantains and a mojito

Shrimp and scallops with a champagne tomatillo sauce over fresh pasta with a great Pinot Grigio.

Some thoughts on my wanderings. 

Cheese and beer is probably self explanatory.  But as I thought further, I was imagining that excellent Irish sharp cheddar in my mind, crumbling slightly as you cut it and standing up nicely to a hoppy IPA.  A big hunk of crispy crusty on the outside and moist on the inside sourdough to set it off just completes the culinary poem.

Chicken wings and a wheat beer.  Spicy chicken wings are among YDS's favorite food.  For all their cursed corporateness, Buffalo Wild Wings (formerly BW3's) has some of the best widely available sauce at their restaurants (although homemade is best).  It's too bad the quality of the chicken they buy is completely horrendous.  Anyway, half of their "Hot" and half of their "Spicy Garlic" strikes the perfect balance.  A good wheat beer has excellent mouth feel and stands up well to the spicy sauce.  It makes a perfect companion.

In Northern Europe, they drink a lot of vodka.  To cleanse your palate between shots of vodka (and YDS suspects to keep you drinking), they often will bite into a pickle or some kind of salted fish.  In fancy restaurants, to those that are drinking a lot of vodka, they serve what is known as a vodka plate, which is loaded down with pickles of all kinds, pickled cucumbers, olives, garlic, onions, etc.  And usually some salted meat and fish.  In a higher class place, there might be some caviar as well.  YDS was introduced to this excellent culinary/drinking experience in Riga, Latvia.  The Kipoklu Krogs (the Garlic Bar although I could swear it was the Kiploklu Nams or Garlic House when I was there) serves an excellent vodka plate, as does the fancy Russian restaurant (not suprisingly).  Given the finanical collapse in Latvia, YDS is not certain that either still exists.

Ireland has a fast food fish and chips chain called Beschoff's.  It's the best fish and chips I've ever had.  Plus they have all different kinds of fish, included smoked fish.  You may pickle your insides from the sodium, but you will enjoy it.  Perhaps the Guiness will balance out the salt.  Perhaps not.

Fried oysters might be my favorite food of all time, if it isn't chicken wings.  I have great memories of standing in a cold drizzle at the Oyster Festival in Urbana with a huge plate of fried oysters in one hand and trying to eat while balancing an ice cold Budweiser in the other hand.  The term "tooth cracking cold" comes from a theatre friend of YDS's and is the best way to drink a Budweiser, which even though it has it's charms and it's place, is not the best crafted beer in the world.  I'm not sure why the image of a slightly underdone steak fry jumped into my mind, but I love how there's a little firmness and extra potato "bite" to a big steak fry that isn't quite done.

There's a small Cuban fast food place in the basement food court of the International Building on I street in DC.  Their masitas de puerco (chunks of pork) are unbelievable.  I don't know how they make them, but most recipes require overnight marinating in bitter orange juice and lots of onions and garlic.  You deep fry the pork and cover with a buttery, oniony, garlicy sauce.  Holy smokes.  A mojito would go perfect with this meal, but sadly, the food court is dry....

The tomatillo recipe is one of the many masterpieces of YDS's chef sister.  I love tomatillos and seafood and this recipe is brilliant.  She recently shared the secret of the sauce in the family recipe book that I blogged about last year.  Fresh pasta is time consuming, but worth the wait...

If YDS was following the rules of essay construction, this would be the point at which I added a pithy conclusion about food and comfort and taste and memory and the association of food with love.  But YDS is an iconoclast and the conclusions at the moment seem awfully trite and unenlightening.  So I will close by saying, all this note taking has made me hungry...

Riffing on an MLK quote.

Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies - or else? The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

How is it that Martin Luther King, Jr. was so correct and so wrong at the same time?  The chain reaction of evil hate begetting hate and wars producing more wars did not plunge us into the abyss.  At least not then.  Not in the 1960s.

It was not our stopping to love our neighbors, that created social change.  Instead, in a very real sense, it was Dr. King's blood tht brought about the legal changes in the United States necessary for us to build a society so much more premised in equality than the one that he left behind.  Our nation was poised on the dark abysss of annihilation after his assassination and I'm afraid it was fear that made us take the collective step back represented in integration and the civil rights legislaton of the 1960s.

And we never learned to love our enemies in the Soviet Union.  Instead we learned to outspend them.  We pressed them financially on every front through proxy wars and an unwinnable arms race until the cracks in their horribly flawed economic model sprung wide open spilling their society and driving the "Union" apart.  Again it was fear of the abyss that drove the solution that ended the Cold War with its unending proxy wars.

Even so, aren't we at that impasse again?  Have we ever left it?  Perhaps resolving our conflicts through fear means that we have never really solved them at all.  And now, living in this part of the world, in this nation in particular, where skating to the edge of the abyss holding hatred so close to your heart seem to be the national sport, Dr. King's solution seems to be the only solution.  But how do we get to that solution?

As Americans, we can't point to the times when love motivated our social change.  Our changes were born out of violence, out of tragedy, out of necessity.  Must it be a lesson of "do as we say, not as we do?"

Dr. King's words were inspired by his understanding of the teachings of the Christian prophet.  Mohammed's teachings are not so different that Iraqis, Shi'a and Sunni, Arab and Kurd, shouldn't be able to see the wisdom of reconciliation through love and the damage that we do to ourselves and each other through the chain reaction of evil.

But perhaps, YDS brings a westerner's worry to the process here.  Since before both Jesus and Mohammed, Arabs were one moment at each other's throat in conflict and the next clasping each other to their breasts in friendship.  Perhaps this formative Iraqi state is no different.  Perhaps the love is not so far from here after all.

Dr. King would love that to be true.

How I did.

Well, Dear Reader, I am long since returned from R&R and thought I'd provide you an update on how I did running down the things that I miss from the U.S. while I was home.  So here they are in order:

• A well poured pint of Guiness - I had a decent (but not great) pint at Champp's Sports Bar in Pentagon City.  What it may have lacked in quality, I absolutely made up for in quantity.  Thanks to all of YDS's friends who met for many pints and sports bar type food.  Well enjoyed.
• Sushi - YDS's brother in law took him to an excellent sushi bar in Virginia Beach and introduced him to white tuna.  Absolutely amazing, a great restaurant and great company.
• Good mexican food - Had a great meal and great fun with Skippy Jr. at Mexico Restaurant.  There was balloon sculpture and really good salsa, so everyone was happy.
• Good chinese food - Eat Rice carry out near my sister's house.  A nice meal with YDS's sister and her family.
• A nice restaurant (of any sort) - Satisfied this jones by drinking with a dear friend at the The Jefferson's recently renovated bar.
• A great Southern breakfast - McLean's with the author of Greg's Alien.  Salt herring and eggs.  Biscuits and gravy.  If it weren't for the fact that we talked for an hour afterward, I wouldn't have been able to move.
• Rain - It rained a lot while we were at Virginia Beach.  Lots of my favorite misty foggy type rain.  Check and checked well.
• Fall - It was late fall, with a lot of leaves already down, but still fall.  Check.
• A good orthoepaedic mattress - Not so much.  My parents have a decent bed in their guest bedroom, but not great.  I still miss my mattress.
• College football on at the right time of day - Oh yeah.  Although Skippy Jr. did not believe it was a good use of my time. 
• A massage - My parents had a therapist all lined up to greet me the first day I was home.  It really helped unkink after the long long trip.
• Sundays as part of the weekend - This was certainly true, but it wasn't a big deal, because I was on vacation the whole time.  Hee hee.
• A sports bar - The aforementioned Champp's where we happened on the replay of the UNC v. Stanford semi final in women's soccer, which I did not know the outcome of, so it was almost as good as watching live.

So there you have it, Dear Reader, an R&R full of checking off the list.  YDS was pretty successful and had a great R&R.

It wasn't even a real fortune cookie ...

A friend of mine got a sort of cyber-fortune cookie.  Remarkably enough it got me thinking and since it was about forgiveness, which is a generally nice thing, and since it is a new year, which is a good time to think about forgiveness, I thought I would share some of those thoughts with you.  I hope the person I shared them with first doesn't mind.  I've edited and organized a little to present to you Dear Reader.

So the cookie (virtual though it may be) says, "To love is to forgive." And I think that's true, but it certainly isn't a complete definition. To love is to do a lot more things than just forgive (one of my favorite definitions is, as hackneyed as it may seem, 1 Corinthians 13). 

What's more interesting about the fortune cookie saying though is something that it implies, by virtue of the definition, but doesn't state.  And the implication is what really got me thinking.  What it implies pretty clearly is that the absence of forgiveness is an absolute indicator of the absence of love.

It has been true in my own experience.  Warning YDS is about to get more personal than he usually does, but this is about forgiveness and it's hard to think about it in the abstract.  That an absence of forgiveness is an absolute indicator of the absence of love was certainly true on my ex's part during our marriage.  She could not forgive my faults in a way that would renew our relationship.  She couldn't forgive me in a loving way and in retrospect that (perhaps more than anything) shows me that she wasn't really in love with me (or couldn't be in love with me).  A deeper question is whether she had that capacity even before we were married.  YDS will not explore that right now.

And even more important (or just as important), that as I healed from the divorce, the absence of real relationship renewing forgiveness was the clearest sign to me that I didn't love her anymore.  I was no longer willing to spend that emotional energy to forgive her completely for what happened during and after our marriage.  I had done it time after time during the marriage and the relationship.  It was sometimes easy, and sometimes hard.  But I had done it, and had the emotional energy to do it, because I loved her.  A person in love will do no less.

Part of it is that there must be two kinds of forgiveness. The first is that everyday "oh, it's okay, no problem, we can still get along" sort of forgiveness. The second is the real, deep seated forgiveness, the kind of forgiveness that is given unconditionally and renews a relationship completely. The first is a social forgiveness.  A heartfelt, if ordinary, forgiveness.  The second is a full forgiveness.  An elightened forgiveness.  A loving kindness fogiveness.  If "to love is to forgive," then that's the sort of forgiveness that they are talking about. I know that what I have for my ex is the first kind of forgiveness and not any sort of the second kind...

I mean, I forgive her even now, in that I don't hold it against her (most of the time).  I try very hard not to be a vengeful person.  I know that harboring ill feelings for another extracts an emotional cost and drains you of your energy.  But the reality is that I don't forgive her to the extent that it means that our relationship is renewed despite what happened. So while I have "forgiveness lite" for her, it's not real forgiveness, and so (I think) it means pretty clearly that I don't love her anymore.

Perhaps a fully enlightened person is able to forgive anyone anything in a completely relationship renewing way.  If so, it is one more sign that YDS is not fully enlightened.  This should come as a suprise to no one.

I think the point might be stronger one way than the other. You can forgive someone without loving them.  Although perhaps that fully enlightened person loves everyone, so forgiveness from that type of person always means that the enlightened person loves the forgiven.  You can absolutely forgive someone with out being "in love" with them. But you can't love someone without being able to forgive them. And you can't be in love with someone you can't forgive.

It becomes really painful when you think you ought to be in love with that person because of your relationship and you aren't. You can't forgive them anymore, you can't go back and completely renew that relationship with them. But you made those promises. You remember the love that you had. You remember that you used to be able to forgive and you want that back. But eventually you are too hurt and the pain that that your husband or wife is causing is too much to forgive. So you shut down, like I did, or you are in pain all the time.
All this begs a really interesing question. Do you have to completely forgive (my "enlightened forgiveness" described above) a former love before you can love again? I don't know. That seems really hard. I've forgiven my ex in the social way, but not in the enlightened way.  What does that mean for my future?  Will I have to find enlightened forgiveness for my ex to love again?  I hope not.  Seems hard.

Too Good Not to Share

Thanks to CNN.com for this donut chart (mmmmm, donuts).  Funny to see the Firesign Theater recognized.  One of my early (very early) comedic influences as well.  A little sloppy to have "Adult Swim" as a single "Influenced."  There have been probably more than thirty separate shows that have been part of Adult Swim since its inception.  Love that The Critic is on the list.  I miss that show.

Life is good.

Harrison Barnes.  Number one recruit in the country.  Makes the only sane decision and signs with Carolina.

Now a prospect is a prospect and some work out and some don't.  So while having this amazing athlete attend my alma mater is a good thing, the more fun thing about this news might be that Coach Rat (Kryshewski or some other such spelling) recruited this kid hard.  Coach Williams only started recruiting him after the Final Four.

And where does he go?  Chapel Hill, baby.  Chapel Hill.

The payback for the Nineties and the early 2000s is on.  And even after two national titles and a 7-2 record over the last nine head-to-head meetings, it looks as though the waters might continue to flow Carolina Blue for a while.

Things that I miss

Your Darn Skippy will soon be headed back to the world (ie. back to the States) for some well earned R&R.  As I look forward to that, I'm trying to think of the things that I miss most about the United States.  A common theme stood out to me, and I wonder if it will to you as well, Dear Reader.

A caveat:  the thing that I miss the most, is not a thing at all.  It is (he is?) my dear sweet son, Skippy, Jr.  I miss him so terribly that I'm not sure that I dare plunge the depth of that emotion.  It is probably better to let that sleeping dog lie, at least until there is some comfort of distance.  So other than Skippy, Jr. here are the things I miss.

1. A well poured pint of Guiness
2. Sushi
3. Good mexican food
4. Good chinese food
5. A nice restaurant (of any sort)
6. A great Southern breakfast
7. Rain
8. Fall
9. A good orthoepaedic mattress
10. College football on at the right time of day
11. A massage
12. Sundays as part of the weekend
13. A sports bar

I guess the common theme only holds through the first four, but it's sort of obvious and it was the same way that I felt about missing the US when I was posted overseas for two years.  One of the absolute best things about the United States is the easy access to ethnic delicacies.  A Guiness, sushi, mexican food.  Ahh. 

Not all at once, of course.  Although Guiness does pair well with sushi.

I can't wait to be home.

Hark the Sound ...

The sweet sound of victory.

Any season where you beat Dook is a pretty good season.  Now let's see about taking care of BC and/or NCState (especially the Wolfies) and we can call it a good season.

How I got to Baghdad (the last chapter)

I mentioned that Jordan was hot.  Jordan was a warm spring day compared to the blast furnace of the runway at Baghdad International Airport (BIAP).  The Airport is half civil airport and half military installation.  Well, maybe three quarters military and one quarter civilian.  That was true in the former regime as well, but there was a different military sharing the airport.
.
We were marched away from the back of the C-130 (once again through the baking wash of the four turbo prop engines) and toward the passenger terminal on the military side.  The wash is sort of amazing, powerful and frightening.  Maybe you've walked across an airport tarmac to one of those puddle jumpers that everyone hates to fly from Scraton to Pittsburgh.  Sometimes the engines are already revved up as you arrive, and they're sort of intimidating.  Not because you think they could actually cause you harm, but because, hey, you've seen the Indiana Jones movies and what happened to that big German dude was no joke.  Well imagine the engine on that puddle jumper roaring away, but ten times the size.  And then multiply it by four.  Add in the incredible heat of an August afternoon in Iraq and you might be approaching what we were walking though.  The wind pushed us away from the engines rather than sucking us toward their whirling blades, but being out of control even stepping away from them was intimidating.
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Grabbing our bags from the pallet, we made our way through our first T-walls.  Now, you don't know it yet, but T-wall is an incredibly descriptive term.  Everyone is familiar with Jersey walls, those ubiquitous wedges of concrete that have saved countless lives of highway contstruction workers and chewed up billions of dollars worth of bumpers and tires of inattentive drivers.  So T-walls are Texas walls, to be compared with Jersey walls with the knowledge that "everything is bigger in Texas."  They are fifteen foot high Jersey walls that are used everywhere in Iraq.  They are used as walls, for traffic control, and for shrapnel control.  They are all over every U.S. installation in Iraq, including the Embassy compound.  They were awesome on first seeing them but they are pedestrian, even vaguely annoying after a short period of time in country.
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Beyond the T-walls, we were guided to the small compound within a military base known as Sully.  Sully is kind of a holding compound for transiting non-military folks in the middle of the huge military base at BIAP.  We were waiting there for the "shuttle" for the final six or seven miles of our journey.  The compound is surrounded, of course, by T-walls.  There's a hard cover to protect against indirect fire (IDF, which is usually mortars and rockets), a bunch of trailers, and well, that's about it.  There's a computer lounge trailer, a TV lounge trailer, an office trailer, a bathroom trailer with showers, and several sleeping trailers.  After a briefing which basically said, you're here for a while, there isn't much to do, and dinner isn't for a few hours, we were left to our own devices.
.

I said, "shuttle."  That is scarely accurate, even with the quotation marks.  The shuttle is known affectionately as "The Rhino."  It is essentially a heavily armored recreational vehicle painted a color best described as rhinoceros grey.  It is in that cross between the short bus and a tank that you make the initial trip from BIAP to the Embassy, unless, of course, you happen to be important enough to rate a helicopter or a Diplomatic Security convoy of your own.  As I think I made clear before, I do not rate.  When I arrived in Iraq, the Rhino only ran late in the night and at variable times to make it a hard target for terrorists and improvised explosive devices (IEDs).  So we waited, again until that indeterminate time, when the Rhino would be ready for us and we would make the run down Route Irish through the red zone to the relative safety of the international zone and finally home onto the Embassy compound.  That was the goal.  But first, we waited.
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As I explored the 150 square yards that was my home for the immediate future, the migraine which had been lurking seized on the searing heat and bright sunlight and settled behind my left eye.  It built through the feeling of pressure during our brief orientation and hammered right on through into full blown pain after less than forty five minutes or so in Iraq.  Although I know it is impossible, the sensation was something like a rabid hamster alternately gnawing on my optic nerve and digging away at the back of my sphenoid sinus.  It hurt.  A lot.
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I could not get comfortable.  I couldn't sit.  I couldn't read or listen to music.  I could sort of watch TV for a few minutes at a time, but had to get up every ten minutes or so to change the angle of the pressure inside of my head.  Not that the pain went away, but it just changed a little and so provided some small measure of relief.  Everyone was exhausted, and I could feel the thoughts of my compatriots every time I got up not so much to do anything but rather to change the angle of attack of the headache.  "Where could he possibly be going?  Why can't he just fall into a stupor like the rest of us?  Why does he keep moving around?"  Sorry, everyone.  You do what you have to do.
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After a couple of hours, several of us went over to the cafeteria (which in military parlance is a DFAC, short for dining facility) for dinner.  It was fine, I suppose, but I mostly remember being slightly nauseous from the headache and though a cool drink was helpful, a big dinner was not what I was looking for.  After dinner, there was really nothing to do.  The setting sun provided some relief from the heat and the temperature dipped into the low 100s.  Brrrr.  We were still about five hours away from the earliest time at which we might begin our trip from Sully compound to the Embassy.  The Embassy which was only six or seven miles away.  The Embassy that I had been travelling since Friday noon to get to (it was now early evening on Sunday).  Six tantalizing miles away.
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There's a sort of insanity inspired by waiting so long so close to your ultimate destination.  One colleague here has said "Six years later and we can't take a cab from the airport to the Embassy.  We have lost this war."  I don't agree; there are plenty of countries where the Regional Security Officer won't let you take a cab to the airport:  Colombia, Venezuela, Haiti, etc.  But I get the point.  And it sets a tone for your tour in Iraq.  Everything is hard here.  Getting from the airport to the Embassy can be really, really hard.  And that is frustrating.  Especially so when you already been travelling for thirty-six or so hours.
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All of the cots in the sleeping room were long since spoken for by sleeping bodies, so I tried occasionally to watch TV.  The big chairs were comfortable, when you could snag one, but I was not.  So I would have to give up my comfy chair from time to time to move around, and most of the time found it re-occupied by the time I returned.  Even through my headache, Undercover Brother made me smile but time passed incredibly slowly.  Master and Commander with its pretentiousness (intended or otherwise) did not make me smile. 
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Sometime after midnight, they rounded us up again and moved us to a different place on the compound, perhaps half a mile away.  The Rhino Station is a low plywood building surrounded by, what else?  T-walls.  There is a front porch and a little yard with gravel six inches deep.  With the darkness and finally cooling degrees (down to 90!) my headache began to ease its grip.
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It was here, at the Rhino Station, that I realized fully that we were in a war zone, even now.  In my imagination, you could have plopped this station down at some staging area in the Mekong Delta thirty years ago and you would have had the exact same vibe.  Well, there were way more civilians here than there would have been there and civilians are a stupid lot in an environment like that.  We don't stand in line well.  We have too much luggage.  We wander off and need instructions repeated.  But as a unit of soldiers flooded into the Station groggy from their own odessy into Iraq, it was very clear that we were not in just any hardship post.  We were in a war zone.
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We were "manifested" onto the Rhinos and thankfully, I had all the right ID to get my name on the list and then ... what else?  We waited.  The wait was shorter this time and after a chuckle about a couple of DHS agents who had slept through the call to move from Sully to the Rhino Station and a longer than comfortable moment of panic when I could not find my backpack (it was on my back) the Rhinos arrived.  We threw our bags in a container (really, one of those big shipping containers) and climbed, hopefully, onto the Rhino that was headed to the Embassy.  After some confusion about who was on which Rhino headed exactly where in the international zone which would have been hilarious at noon but was completely unentertaining at three in the morning, our little convoy started to roll.
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Now I was wide awake again.  I peered out the window into the dark, trying to get a glimpse of the country that I would be serving in for the next year.  Other than the checkpoints we went through, it was dark.  There wasn't much to see.  Electricity is kind of scarce here (for a ton of reasons) and who knows if there are really a lot of buildings along that road anyway.  I certainly didn't.  Still I strained my eyes into the darkness, trying to remember my anti-IED training.  Looking for signs that a pile of trash by the road might conceal our doom.  More than once I pushed to the bottom of my conciousness thoughts of what it might be like if there was an explosion, if the reinforced glass came shattering inward, and the Rhino lurched to the side as the drivers were blown apart.  I was scared.
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Was there really good reason to be?  Who's to say?  The attacks on Route Irish are few and far between these days, but they do still happen.  It was my first night there and my mind was exhausted from the day(s) that had led me to that point.  I had said good bye to Patrick only a little more than 48 hours before, but it seemed as though that might have been another father saying good bye to another son.  I was in a different world.  On a different planet.  Worried, over-worried probably, but still with good reason, that something really bad might happen to me before I found my new bed in my new home.
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But, of course, it didn't.  The ride was relatively short, and completely uneventful.  We went through one more checkpoint, this one with American faces manning it, and we were in the International Zone, in the Green Zone.  We were, well, home.  We took off our helmets, and I for one, began to breathe again.
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The huge bus made a sweeping right turn into a controlled access center that has been repeated at the walls of fifty Embassy's around the world.  Peruvian guards came on and checked our IDs and we were through.  Slightly dizzy from exhaustion, I climbed out of the rhino and got my first look at the Embassy compound.  It looked then (and still looks now to me) like nothing other than a residential community college in the American southwest.  With a wall around it.  I grabbed my suitcase, which now seemed to weigh 130 pounds rather than the 65 that it really was, and lined up to get my key to my apartment.
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I was last in line, and this time, not on the list.  They had no key for me.  After a moment of searching around, they discovered that they were expecting me the next night.  By then, everyone else had stumbled off to their rooms and I was left to find SDA (Staff Diplomatic Apartment) 6-307 on my own.  At that time, the SDA's had no signs on the outside (or inside for that matter) to tell you which was which.  I knew the place where I got my key was SDA 1, but that was all I knew, so I guessed.  And guessed badly.
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I figured out eventually that I was in the wrong building by examining, of all things, the fire alarm system.  I guessed again and guessed wrong.  One more guess put me in a third wrong building.  Finally, I pulled my suitcase, my carry on luggage, and my armored, exhausted body into the correct building and found the right room.  My scratching around with the key woke my roommate, a good friend and work colleague from home, who welcomed me to Iraq with a sleepy smile.  I left unpacking for the next day and collapsed onto my bed, pausing only long enough to take out my dried out contact lenses.  It was ten after four in the morning on Monday.  I had traveled for about 56 hours.  I was here.
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I would wake up the next day in Baghdad.
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YDS
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Not to say I told you so...

But here is what Uncle Skippy was saying a year ago about socialism.  And what industry did he pick to make his point?  I know, it was pretty obvious, but I like to preen a little from time to time.
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Honestly, though, why did almost no one scream "socialism!" when the Bush administration socialized the banking system and so many are screaming it now when Obama's administration is taking on the long deferred task of addressing the healthcare system?
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It's not a rhetorical question.  The answer is that Americans for better or worse, value their dollar more than they do the health of their fellow Americans.
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For better or worse.

How I got to Baghdad (In country at last!)

Let's see. Where were we Dear Reader? Ah, yes, blissfully sliding off to sleep in a four-star hotel in a ten thousand year old city with dread behind and hope ahead.
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Well, not quite. Sleep came in fits and starts, as it often does, when anticipating an early morning start and mulling over the bad, bad consequences of oversleeping. So I did not sleep well. Basically, I slept in 55 minute blocks as I rolled to look at the clock exactly on the hour every hour between two and seven a.m. How I managed to know when the top of the hour was coming in order to wake and check the clock, I have no idea. Ask a biologist, perhaps, or a sleep therapist. All I know is that it is annoying and frustrating and an almost helpless feeling to be caught in a sleep cycle like that. Knowing that you will need every ounce of energy for the road ahead, but terrified that you will miss your alarm and have to scramble to catch up with a day out of control from its very beginning.
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My terror, of course, was completely unwarranted, but I did not know that at the time and so the fitful sleep continued.
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The alarm worked and the front desk rang through with a cheerful, if slightly unintelligible, wakeup call and the day began. Having not slept well, I got ready painfully slowly and eventually rolled my bag into the all glass elevator too late for breakfast. It was probably just as well as my stomach had no idea what time it was or what meal was appropriate.
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I checked out and once again found myself in a group of Americans as we waited for our black Mercedi to take us this time to a quasi-military airport for the next leg of the journey. Mine was among the first to arrive pretty much exactly at the 8 a.m. departure time that I had been told to prepare for. I slid in next to the driver and again had a nice chat on the ride. The drive looked as though he was African American and spoke English with only a whisper of an accent, but he was born in Amman and had never been to the U.S. Go figger.
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We went through what appeared to be a Jordanian Army checkpoint and arrived at the airport. Airport was a kind appellation for the entrance way, security point, holding area, snack shop and duty free that made up this installation. He let me out and I overtipped again, still having made no change for the 20 dollar bills that I had (much less gotten local currency).
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And the day of waiting began.
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Our first point of waiting was the entrance way of the airport. I was near first there, and though there were clearly other Americans there, it was far from clear that I was in the right place for the rather specific flight that I was about to take. So I was nervous. After some time, much longer than I would have expected, others from the hotel began to arrive and so my dread that I was some how terribly mistaken in arriving at this place, which didn't yet look much like an airport, started to recede.
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The chatter around me was interesting and though I thought perhaps I should strike up a conversation with someone, anyone, I wasn't much in the mood to talk. Those talking the loudest were those returning from their R&R (rest and recuperation) trips who recognized friends or acquaintances returning at the same time. They swapped stories of their travel and their families and laughed about the inconveniences of life at the Embassy or in Baghdad or, for some of them, on the Provincial Reconstruction Teams. I eavesdropped unabashedly--still hungry for information even after all the blogs I'd read, the message boards I'd scoured, and the orientation courses I'd taken. It was somewhat odd to be that curious, I thought, as in twenty-four hours I'd be in the middle of it myself, but still I craved more, hoping that the next nugget, the next sage word would assure me finally and completely that it was going to be okay after all.
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Curiously, that sage word did not come.
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After about forty-five minutes, a small group of spectacularly bored looking Jordanians showed up to usher us through the security check point. Shoes and belts off, the whole deal. We stood in line to check our bags (learning that they would be "palletized" which I did not even realize was a word) and get a sort of cross between a ticket and a door prize stub. Neither process inspired confidence in our eventual arrival (mine or my luggage) anywhere near our intended destination.
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Anyway, we were through the checkpoint by about 9:15 and into the lounge for the next and much longer stretch of waiting. It soon became apparent that we were not the only flight leaving that morning. Women, children, and mostly sullen men began to filter into the waiting lounge as well. One man in particular, was pretty alarming, as his hair was wild, his clothes were unwashed and he kept referring furtively to a laptop that he kept guarded close to his body.
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I learned, as we waited, that signs that say "No Smoking" in English apparently mean "Smoke Profusely, preferably two cigarettes at once if you can" in Arabic. Who knew? It is at times like these that you realize the downside of the ever-growing prohibition on indoor smoking in the United States. There was a time when Your Darn Skippy could spend the entire evening in a smoke filled bar and not really notice that the smoke was bad until waking the next morning having to hold his jeans at arm's length while depositing them in the laundry basket. That time is long gone. Now a single cigarette causes significant discomfort and being virtually surrounded by chain smokers ignoring the "No Smoking" signs did significant damage to my sinuses and awoke the migraine monster who had not been completely run off by the fitful night's sleep.
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"I'm here" said the monster, "and I'm ready."
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Thankfully, the plane for the smoking men and the women and children and the crazy computer guy came and they began to board. There were anxious moments as it appeared that crazy computer guy would dawdle too long fiddling with his computer and be left with us. But thankfully, the too patient air crew came back to get him and he too left.
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And we waited. Now, understand that there was no flight time for this little trip to Baghdad, so the waiting took on a Kaufka-esque quality. We were passing time, but we had no idea how much. There were planes there, but were they the ones we were waiting for? I even saw C-130s land, but still we waited.
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Finally, sometime after noon, they told us we were ready (I had been ready...) and hustled us out to a container outside of the lounge to be assigned body armor and helmets for the ride. And after some waiting in the hot sun, we were led across the tarmac to a waiting C-130. Unless you are a very important person, and YDS is not, and neither were the people I was traveling with, you board a C-130 from behind and with the engines running.
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The C-130's gate drops down to form a ramp that doesn't quite reach the ground, so there is a not insignificant step up (especially when wearing armor which people call PPE for personal protective equipment or BBA for battle (?) body armor, or if you really want to show that you are a geek, call it "battle rattle" when you aren't in the military). The beast is loud and you have to wear ear plugs while boarding and for the whole trip. It was brilliantly bright and hot in the Jordanian sun and dark inside of the C-130, so boarding through the hairdryer exhaust of the plane was intimidating to say the least.
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The C-130 is a cargo plane. And today, this C-130's cargo was diplomats. There are no chairs, only sort of sling benches. And they don't face foward, they face to the side. And, as I found out soon enough, there are gaps in the benches just large enough to get sort of stuck in...
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We settled in as they loaded the pallet with our luggage on behind us.  We struggled to figure out the seat belts and waited in anticipation in our hot, dark seats as the plane taxied. It's not all that unusual not to be able to see out of the plane that your are riding in, but it's still sort of comforting to know that someone in your row has that window seat and can have a look outside to see where you are. On a C-130, there is no such luxury. There are almost no windows in the cargo compartment and the ones that are there, you wouldn't be able to see much out of anyway. There's no clue regarding the end of the taxiing and the beginning of your takeoff.  There are no geographic points of reference to slake your curiosity.  There isn't anything to look at but each other and that's kind of rude, so there's really nothing to look at.
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When you're sitting at a right angle to the direction a plane is travelling as it takes off, you slide over with the acceleration of the plane as it hurtles down the runway and as it climbs into the sky. As I slid over, I slid quite squarely into the gap between the sling benches and the fellow next to me slid over as well occupying the space I had been in. Now the funny part is that I didn't really realize that there weren't these ridiculous gaps under all of the seats, so I didn't think to ask for him to slide back over. He was promptly asleep anyway, so I was doomed to one buttock on the bench and one in the gap, setting my spine at an uncomfortable angle only exacerbated by the forty-five or so pounds of body armor. A recipe for my busted disc to act up, if ever there was one.
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Once we were safely in the air, there was really nothing to do. I got out my iPod and replaced my earplugs with the noise reducing earbuds that I had and listened to music. For my eyes, it was too dark to read, but a woman across from me was studying a wedding magazine with great intent. It was a curious juxtaposition: her in her body armor and helmet, turning carefully through the pages of "Bride" magazine.
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Time passed slowly, but it passed and after two hours (More? Less? I couldn't say for sure anymore.), we started our descent. The crew slammed the belly of the C-130 onto the tarmac at Baghdad International Airport (BIAP) and I was in Iraq.
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Once again Dear Reader, the hour has grown late. This story has only one more chapter, I promise, but I cannot finish it tonight. Soon.

As most of us suspected all along.

Finally the truth is revealed!  What could we expect of those Devil worshippers eight miles away?

Carry your crucifix at night Tar Heel fans.  Other ACC fans should watch out too, but you have the luxury of distance.

Fascinating who Amazon.com thinks I am

Dear Amazon.com customer, As someone who has shown an interest in non-stick cookware, you might like to know about nylon cooking utensils that will keep your non-stick surface in good shape.

Someday, I aspire to get one of these little lovenotes from Amazon.com about ninja equipment, or jet packs, or at least something not completely nerdy.

Sigh.

How I got to Baghdad (cont.)

I'll back up a bit.  I know, Dear Roomate, I hear you scream "Get on with it!" but Dear Reader is a kinder, gentler audience and I want to paint the full picture.

Although the flight to Heathrow was uneventful, that is not to say that it was restful, or even particularly pleasant.  Your Darn Skippy is not a small man and was larger at his time of departure than he has been for quite some time (larger than he is now, seven weeks on, truth be told).  Economy class seats are not kind to my frame.  The knees and my low back are the special targets for physical discomfort inflicted by long periods in a cramped and uncomfortable chair.  But thankfully, there are no tales of equally huge people sitting next to me, no snoring, and for this leg of the trip at least, no real issues of crying babies.  In fact, I had an aisle seat, and so could control my own access to my seat and to the restroom and had a relatively small British woman sitting next to me who slept much of the flight.  Compared to the possibilities, not unpleasant.

I watched Star Trek (YDS rates it "Fun! but not a classic") and part of Taken (forgettable) and one other movie that escapes me at the moment (apparently even more forgettable).  I read and listened to music.  I even dozed a bit, but I do not generally sleep on airplanes, an unfortunate shortcoming of mine.  So on arriving at Heathrow, while not the horrible place of my imagination, I was still quite tired and disoriented getting there in the morning of the next day (August 15 for those of you scoring at home).

The lounges were all quite bright and loud and commercially oriented, so even though the seats might have otherwise been very suitable for a nap, the ambiance was not.  I eventually ate, not so much because I was hungry (I wasn't) but because I figured I need to keep my strength up for another long flight.  This time from London to Amman.  The layover was not all that long, under five hours, so my memories of Heathrow are not horrific, just ordinary.

Boarding for the plane to Amman was less auspicious.  There was a large contingent of families with small children and as I boarded, I worried that this flight would not be as tranquil as my transatlantic journey.  The odds seemed to favor some, if not all, of those small children crying at one time or another.

Now understand, Dear Reader, lest you think that I am an intolerant baby hater that YDS made serveral transatlantic flights with Skippy Jr. when Skippy Jr. was quite young.  Virtually all of them were disastrous including the last one.  That memorable flight featured just the two of us traveling together. The highlight was YDS nearly having a nervous breakdown saved only by the providence of a flight attendant willing to let Skippy Jr. sit in the galley with the rest of the attendants for a while so that his father could close his eyes for just a few minutes before they popped out of his head.  Therefore, part of me is quite compassionate when it comes to parents traveling with small children.

That part of me, however, must battle stiffly with the increasingly grumpy middle aged man in me, who would like to have a peaceful flight and isthattoomuchtoask, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD???  Pun intended, but not appreciated by YDS while in that situation.  So across the aisle and one row behind was a Middle Eastern man traveling with three small children without any apparent adult female assistance.  And quite predictably, his babe in arms cried.  Not so predictably, however, the baby cried for approximately four hours out of the five hour and fifteen minute flight.  This baby was not the only one crying on the flight, but certainly took honors for the most persistant wailer.

I tried to offer the poor man with the babe in arms sympathetic looks on a frequent basis, as I truly was sympathetic, but those glances became more and more infrequent as the grumpy middle aged man battled against the compassionate parent who had walked a mile in those very uncomfortable shoes.  Time passed, of course, but slowly and the five plus hours between London and Amman seemed much longer than the seven plus between DC and London.

It was deep in the night of August the Fifteenth when we arrived in Amman.  My first landing in the Middle East; my second trip to Asia.  I was tired, somewhat hungry, definitely thirsty, and nursing a vague headache that lurked at the base of my skull, but threatened to jump behind my eye with the full force of a migraine at any moment.  And to be honest, I was a little scared.  I'd like to say I was only nervous, but that wouldn't be true to my real emotion on setting down in the Middle East for the first time.

The Middle East, in my hopelessly American mind, was a land of conflict, a land of strife, of suicide bombers and religious intolerance.  A place of violence and hatred, where the clumsy overtures of American diplomacy (not to mention the clumsier attempts at covert influence) only serve to muddy already troubled waters.  OK, I'll give you the Camp David Accords, but what have we done for us lately?

But my rational mind won out as I gathered my bags.  This was Jordan.  Jordan is okay; it's not all that dangerous here, right?  That hard won confidence shattered quickly as I passed the first bank of drivers with their placards welcoming tired travelers and promising an experienced hand (and an Arabic tongue) in clearing immigration and customs.  There was no placard reading "SKIPPY." 

"That's okay," I told myself, "He's probably on the other side of immigration."  But that voice was small and not confident.  I felt a little better to find that there were other Americans headed to Baghdad whose drivers were apparently similarly missing.  We conspired as to how to find alternative arrangements as we stood in line for immigration and hoped collectively that our drivers were waiting on the other side.  The immigration officer typed for a moment in his computer, studied my state of the art passport, stamped it and waved me through.  I forgot entirely the Arabic word for "thank you" (shakrun, by the way) and so mumbled my gratitude in English and pushed through the gate, hoping against hope that my driver was waiting on the other side.

He was.  As were drivers for every American headed to Baghdad through Amman on that flight (probably a dozen of us).  We made our way out to black Mercedes (Mercedeses?) in pairs, driver and diplomat, and slipped out of the airport and onto the highway into Amman.  My driver was exceedingly pleasant and friendly.  We chatted about his family and mine.  About how long he'd been driving and how long I'd been a diplomat.  We traded stories of our sons.  I breathed easier and tried to take in as much of Jordan as I could at night and along a highway, which was not a lot, but some. 

It's hilly, and people like to hang out by campfires along the side of the highway.  That's mostly what I got.  We arrived at my hotel, in a line with all the other Mercedi and I was whisked inside the 1980s splendor of the Hotel Kempinski.  I overtipped my driver and soon I was in a very nice and comfortable room.

I took an overlong and overhot shower (flooding the bathroom in the process) and slipped between crisp, clean, luxurious sheets of my king sized bed and wondered sleepily if they were Egyptian cotton.  (ba dump bump).  My head spun slightly as my soul unwound from the travel and the excitement and I sunk into the pillows under my head finally relaxing the muscles in my neck.

The second day of travel had concluded and so has this installment of the blog entry.  More to come ...

How I got to Baghdad

In the other, more mundane sense of the phrase, but venturing into a country like Iraq can scarcely be described as mundane, so I figure it makes an interesting post. And perhaps I'll hold the attention of my roomate better, who upon reading my last post initially could not remember whether he had read it or not. And when realizing that he had, said "Oh yeah, it was really long and I was reading and reading and you hadn't even got to the airport yet." Perhaps he is not really my audience... But for you Dear Reader, I'll soldier on.

How was the trip to Baghdad? In a word, long. And the length of it makes sense, given that I started my day in the veritable cradle of the longest enduring representative democracy, Williamsburg, Virginia, and ended it in the cradle of civilization itself, Mesopotamia, Babylon, Assyria, the fertile Crescent.

I woke the day of my departure in the same room that I spent my formative years (although the Farrah Fawcett poster is long since down from the wall, and Farrah herself is sadly now departed from this earth). I roused in the first floor cubby that was my bedroom from the time I was seven until I turned eighteen and fled the comfortable nest to the wild wonders of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I spent the morning with Skippy Jr. and packed a few last minute things, before climbing into the car at about 2pm on Friday, August the 14th with my parents and Skippy Jr. as well.

We drove north. First on I64, then 295 around Richmond, and then I95 North, the two hundred yard wide strip of hell that runs from Richmond, Virginia to Washington, DC. (Actually the highway runs from Miami, Florida to the Canadian border near Houghton, Maine, but you will have a hard time convincing me that there is any stretch of it more hellish than that 45 or so miles between Fredericksburg and the Mixing Bowl. (For my non-East Coast dear readers have a gander at this and be glad you live far away.)

However, the highway gods were kind (other fools had sacrificed their days to the concrete totems) and we were not held up by traffic on our way to Dulles Airport.  We stopped for a final dinner for YDS in Reston.  More specifically at an upscale chain restaurant in Reston Town Center, that remarkable testament to planned urban sprawl.  And typically for an American family the choice of cuisine was ethnic, Italian to be exact, and as good as you might expect from that type of restaurant in that type of place.

But I must admit that I scarely remember tasting the food as my thoughts were elsewhere.  I felt strangely and prematurely detached from my son as I watched him squirm in his chair and flirt shamelessly with the waitresses.  His outward motion relected my inner disquiet and it was clear to any willing to read the signs that we shared the same conflict.

Dinner ended and when a stroll of the pedestrian mall did not yeild a toy store, much to Skippy Jr.'s dismay, we climbed back into the car for the final seven miles to Dulles.

No one would confuse Dulles International Airport with a country cottage surrounded by a white picket fence, but never has the hideous testament to modern architecture looked so foreboding.  Dulles is one of my least favorite airports -- it is cold, confusing, and hard to get around in -- and pulling up to the building to leave for Iraq did not enhance its standing in my estimation.  But pull in we did, and after a squabble regarding whether to park in the valet parking without consulting the valet (thankfully, we did not), we were out of the car and headed for the check in counters.

Skippy Jr. waited with me patiently, strangely so, as traveler after traveler moved to the almost fully automated kiosks and began their journeys to more pleasant, but perhaps less interesting destinations.  My turn came and then I had my boarding pass, and my bag was checked (only three pounds overweight).  And then it was time.  I kissed my son and hugged him.  I told him how proud I was of him, for who he was and who he was growing to be.  I promised that I would be home soon and told him of the great time we would have when I was back.  Thinking of it now, it feels as though I was shouting those platitudes into a windstorm.  As though the force of the event ripped the words from my mouth as soon as I could form them and swept them away so that I could not be sure that they reached my son's ears to comfort him.

And he did so well, he was so strong, until I began to stop waving and to walk around the corner to the security check point.  It was then that he began to cry.  It was then that the moment was too much for him, too hard for him to think of three months apart.  I waved again and came back for one final hug and probably told him some further meaningless encouragement, but ultimately, he was crying and was going to continue to cry.

That awful fact was confirmed by a message on my cell phone once I made it though security.  It was a new call and had just come in moments before from my parents' cell phone.  It was Skippy Jr. still crying and sad and wanting to say goodbye one more time.  I returned the call immediately but my parents had switched the phone off.

So there I stood, with my shoes untied and my belt undone, staring at the phone in my hand and cursing my parents near paranoic compulsion with turning off the cell phone and realizing the full force of the fact that I had agreed not only for myself but for my sweet seven year old son, that I would spend a full year in a war zone far removed from my family and from the one person I love more than anyone or anything in the whole world.  That was the choice I had made.

Off to a grand start, wouldn't you say, Dear Reader?

Hoping against hope that my trip had reached an early nadir, I tied my shoes, buckled my belt and headed for the gate.  I was there far too early and so had only time to kill as I waited for the first leg of my odessey, an overnight flight to London's Heathrow to take off.  I read, I listened to music, I tried to write (unsuccessfully).  The highlight was watching the author of Iraqi Chicken (another fine blog) and her husband breeze by on their way to first class seating for the seven hour flight.  The Chicken's husband's comment was something like "What are you earning it for if not to spend?"  An admirable thought, but I was nowhere near that blithe at that particular moment.

The flight was unremarkable and forgettable.  Nowhere near as long as the transcontinental, trans-Pacific marathon I endured in May, but long enough in its own right.  A fair part of the trip was spent in numb dread of Heathrow.  Having never heard a single good word spoken about the place, I was prepared for something of a cross between the Ministry of Information in Terry Guillam's Brazil and a 1984 style government building.

I was not prepared for it to be somewhat pleasant.  I was annoyed by the absolute refusal of airport authorities to post the departure gate until one hour before the plane was due to arrive but found plenty of open and airy (if noisy) lounges to wait and people watch in.  I read again, and listened to music and debated having something to eat ultimately settling on a fast food sandwich that didn't taste completely like cardboard.

Finally, the gate was assigned and it was time for the next leg of YDS's journey up the river:  from London to Amman, Jordan.

This post has gotten really long, so I'll say ... to be continued.

Another Perfect Pop Song?

You, Dear Reader, know very well how YDS loves a good pop song. There is one in particular on YDS's iPod that quite frequently has me reaching to replay it, sometimes over and over, frighteningly like a teenager.

But I can't help it. It has everything a great pop song should have: sex, longing, loneliness, angst, devotion to a lost cause, oh, and a good beat. And it doesn't hurt that both singers for The Veronicas have mastered that baleful sort of nasal tone that I'm doing a horrible job of describing but when you hear it sounds like instant longing.

Or maybe its just a road tramp song...

Anyway, here are the lyrics and the video for The Veronicas, This Love. I hope you enjoy.

This Love
The Veronicas
Hook Me Up

I can see it in your eyes
taste it in our first kiss
stranger in this lonely town
save me from my emptiness

You took my hand
you told me it would be ok
I trusted you to hold my heart
now fate is pulling me away, from you

Even if I leave you now
and it breaks my heart
even if I'm not around
I won't give in
I can't give up
on this love

You've become a piece of me
makes me sick to even think
of mornings waking up alone
searching for you in my sheets
don't fade
away

Even if I leave you now
and it breaks my heart
even if I'm not around
I won't give in
I can't give up
on this love

I can't just close the door
(on this love)
I never felt anything like this before
(like this love)
tell me the truth no matter what we're going through
will you hold on too 'cause
even if I leave you now
and it breaks my heart
even if I'm not around
I won't give in
I can't give up
on this love

Even if I leave you now
and it breaks my heart
even if I'm not around
I won't give in
I can't give up
on this love

Family Cookbook and a recipe for you, Dear Reader

YDS's mom is putting together a family cookbook.  There's going to be a lot of great recipes in it, so I'm very excited.  Even though I'm a pretty decent cook, YDS's main contribution to the book so far has been to suggest some of his favorite dishes from various and sundry family members, especially my grandfather and grandmother.  Many of my memories of my grandfather have to do with food, but perhaps that is a thought best left for another entry. 

My mother did ask me to include one recipe.  It is not the hardest thing I can make, and certainly not the most sophisticated.  But it is one of my favorites and I explained why in the "story" that went with my recipe.  I share it with you now, dear reader:

The Man Behind the Brats


Other than a secret party, my favorite party is a tailgate. I've been making brats this way for about twenty years - ever since I lived in the Midwest and realized it was brats, and not necessarily fried chicken, that was the absolute must have for any good tailgate. (Although I do love fried chicken and a screwdriver.) This recipe has served me well, from UNC football, to DC United, to Richmond Kickers, to US Men's National Team games. The key to their success is not overcooking them in the steaming, but leaving them to finish up on the grill having marinated overnight in a good hoppy beer.


Someone once told me that there is no such thing as a cooking wine; if you want a dish to taste good with wine in it, use a good wine. The same is true for beer. Don't skimp on the beer in this recipe.


YDS

YDS's Tailgate Brats

One package Wisconsin-style brats (Johnsonville or similar)
One very large onion
Two bottles of a good hoppy beer (like a microbrew IPA)
At least two cloves of chopped garlic


1. Coarsely chop the onion and two cloves of garlic.
2. Place one half of the onion and all of the garlic in a the bottom of a large pot fitted with a steamer.
3. Arrange the brats in the steamer. Try to minimize the brats touching each other, so that they will steam evenly.
4. Pour one of the beers over the brats and turn on a high heat.
5. Bring the beer with the onions and garlic to a boil and steam the brats until they turn grayish on the outside, but retain some pink on the inside about ten minutes. Again, take care not to overcook. You want plenty of the fat in the sausage to remain in brats.
6. Once they reach their partially cooked stage (grayish on the outside with a little pink remaining in the middle; about ten minutes) remove from the heat and allow to cool.
7. Place the brats in a large Tupperware or similar container with the remaining onion and as much of the second beer as will fit. If the entire beer won't fit in the container, the leftover will almost certainly fit in you.
8. Marinate overnight. It isn't a tragedy if you are doing this the morning of your event, because you can probably get some decent marinating time in on the way to the stadium.
9. Cook over a good hot charcoal fire on a crisp fall day with the anticipation of a great sporting event. Turn frequently. They are done when they are golden brown and the fat bubbles out clear when you poke them. But only poke one when you are pretty sure that they are done.
10. Serve on a good roll with a robust mustard and sauerkraut.


Usually serves 4 Persons at two brats each
 
So there it is.  I hadn't written much lately until I had a whack at this and I was sort of pleased with how it turned out, so I decided to share it with you.